Football: Guardiola reportedly makes verbal agreement to manage City next season

Qatari-owned sports channel beIN Sport's Arabic Twitter account said on Saturday evening that Bayern Munich's Pep Guardiola has made a verbal agreement to manage English Premier League club Manchester City next season.

It was also reported by beIN that the Spaniard, who is acclaimed as one of football's finest tacticians, will earn 22 millio euros (S$32.75 million) a year to return City to the summit of English football after surrendering its EPL crown to Chelsea as well as winning the Champions League coveted by the club's owners from Abu Dhabi.

Guardiola is currently contracted to the German champions until the end of next season. Although he has won the Bundesliga in each of his two campaigns with Bayern, he was outfoxed in the Champions League semi-final 5-0 on aggregate by Real Madrid last year and in this season's last four, his team suffered a 3-0 beating by Barcelona in the first leg with the return match to be played on May 12.

Former Sky Sports presenter Richard Keys, who now works for the Al Jazeera network in Qatar, tweeted that the beIN story is true and City could make a bid for Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba.

However, Guillem Balague, Sky Sports' Spanish football expert Guillem Balague insisted on social media that there is no truth in Guardiola quitting Bayern for City.

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